(Corrects typographical error in 16th paragraph.)

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- My flight from Washington to London last week was a great deal more time-consuming than usual, to say the least. Just my luck to be heading to London after more than 20 people were arrested for hatching a terrifying terrorist plot.

It was easy to become annoyed. After thinking about it, I decided that the bright side of airport security is pretty interesting.

Given all of the careful checking, we headed out to Dulles International Airport three hours early. Tighter restrictions on passengers, of course, severely limited carry-on luggage. In addition, extra security at the gate required each passenger to go through a thorough search before boarding the plane.

After that, passengers were held in a secured area until they were allowed to board. You could forget about getting a coffee or taking a trip to the facilities after being searched. Add to that the restriction on standing up in the plane at the beginning of the flight, and you start talking serious hardship.

We might be losing the war on terror, but we are winning the war on trips to the bathroom.

The flight back from London promises to be even more difficult, with each passenger limited to one small bag, and, of course, no liquids. And now it looks like London to Washington flights might not be the only ones affected. The U.K.'s home secretary, John Reid, requested that all European Union members adopt the same stepped-up security measures.

Since a network is only as secure as its weakest links, I suspect that the other EU nations will end up complying. This tougher security promises to have very significant economic costs.

Run the Gauntlet

Business people are accustomed to traveling with their luggage in the cabin with them. Instead, they will now have to check their luggage. This will add an enormous amount of time to each trip. Lines to check luggage were long before, when many travelers carried their luggage on. Imagine how much worse it will be with everyone having to run the gauntlet. And the wait once you get there will be worse as well.

How big will these costs be? A number of recent studies have attempted to quantify the economic drag of the higher security imposed since 9/11. The numbers are mind numbing.

One study released by the Milken Institute, a research foundation backer by former junk bond king Michael Milken, for example, estimated that almost 800 million hours would be spent in airports each year if passengers arrived on average 1.5 hours early. Give that time an economic value of $20 and $40 an hour per person and the economic cost of all of that waiting in airports is $16 billion to $32 billion annually, according to the study co-authors Peter Navarro and Aron Spencer.

$100 Billion

Those numbers apply just to the U.S. Add the new restrictions, and include all the travelers around the world in the estimate, and the costs of all that extra time in airports will likely be in the neighborhood of $100 billion.

The interesting thing is that these costs are much higher than necessary. Look at it this way: The 9/11 attackers were all men between the ages of 22 and 33, as far as we know. Fifteen of the 19 attackers were of Saudi Arabian descent. Two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was Lebanese, and one (Mohammed Atta) was Egyptian.

The conspirators who set off the latest scare were again, all young males. Eighteen of them are less than 30 years old, while one (Shamin Mohammed Uddin) is 35. While many of the arrested have British passports, once again, the attackers were of Middle Eastern descent.

Profiling Rejected

So here is how we could save the world economy a good chunk of that $100 billion. We could bar young males who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent from traveling with any carry-on luggage whatsoever. We could also require them to go through extensive screening before being allowed on the flight. When a teddy-bear laden family like the Hassetts wanders into the airport, we let them right on the plane.

To me, the interesting thing is that we have all collectively rejected such an approach, which relies on racial profiling. We have also rejected similar policies that would have no racial content, such as saving the most aggressive restrictions for young men of any race.

We reject these approaches because we believe that it is wrong to discriminate against the majority of any race or group because of the actions of a tiny minority. Equal treatment under the law, and the presumption of innocence, are such precious ideals to us that we have decided to incur billions and billions of dollars in extra costs each year to stand by our convictions. The press might wish that Guantanamo Bay defines us as a people, but I think our willingness to endure the water torture, as it were, of airport security says a lot more.

One might hope that security measures will be found that can reduce this burden somewhat over time. If they are not, then the economic costs of our airport security will be high, but well worth it.

(Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chief economic adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona during the 2000 primaries. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org.

Last Updated: August 21, 2006 08:16 EDT